The Power of Intermittent Fasting

If tonight you get bored with the olympics you will be able to feast your eyes on something different.

Michael Mosley will be leading the charge on another ‘health’ documentary this time about intermittent fasting.

By all accounts I think this one appeals to him and so gets a favorable thumbs up, but given his other slightly dubious ‘scientific’ documentaries I’m intrigued with how it’s done.

I am in favour of intermittent fasting and over the last year or so have found it to be a popular and successful method of accelerating weight loss/ fat loss and improving the health and fitness of my clients, but like all these things when they hit the mainstream and become sensationalized by a journalist in this fashion you see them develop a life of there own.

It’s not that I don’t respect Michael Mosley’s work, and I’ve yet to see the documentary,  but in his previous shows he has painted a rather ignorant picture of what it is to be healthy and fit.

For example following his set point theory of fitness I was inundated by overweight clients with concerns over whether they would ever be fit. Following his brief endeavor into fat loss he used a tabatta protocal and claimed he only needed 4-minutes exercise a week and I fielded questions on the duration of exercise.

I realise Michael Mosley is a qualified doctor but the way he draws attention to his show and the manner in which the information is often depicted is more likened to a journalist. And not one from a broadsheet. 

I accept being on television he needs to attract viewers but my concern is he is humming a popular tune. Don’t like exercise? Only do four-minutes a week. This slightly overlooks the fact you sit at a desk all day and eat cake. You’re unfit? It’s just the way you are. We all have genetics to contend with. Just like Mo Farah can run a fast 10k, I’m pretty sure if he wasn’t running so fast he wouldn’t be head of the Bank of England. None of us picked our parents! Some of us are genetically gifted, others have to work a bit harder.

Tonight he will say something predictable like ‘stop eating to lose weight and improve health’. And whilst I like intermittent fasting, I feel this will be another popular message and will be arming more overly informed and underactive people with more contradictory and confusing ideas.

My point is this. Despite having access to more information than ever before, our country is in a state of woeful health. The majority of people I see are fat and undernourished. This means they eat too much and yet still lack vital nutrients. To tell them to stop eating on certain days or for periods of the day will only exacerbate this. They will still be undernourished.

Again, I like fasting and don’t doubt the benefits. I wrote this post about it a while back and have seen vast improvements in the health and body composition with myself and my clients. But, please don’t take the information of tonights show at face value.

Intermittent fasting is neither new nor revolutionary, but it can be part of a healthy lifestyle. Perhaps before you give it a whirl you should try eating five portions of vegetables a day and exercising regularly then you might experience the full benefits ...Just a wacky idea?!

If you want to discuss this further head over to my Facebook Page or follow me on Twitter @SteveKeywoodPT.

If you still want to give Intermittent Fasting a go or for more information on Intermittent Fasting I think you should look at the following three sites... Precision Nutrition, Eat Stop Eat and Lean Gains.